The Deepest Blue(47)

She tried to reach out with her mind to check for spirits. It was difficult to make her thoughts calm enough—she didn’t know how the other spirit sisters did it so easily back in the valley with Heir Sorka. She hadn’t remembered any of them complaining about difficulty in feeling for spirits. Maybe I’m just bad at this.

“They’re still here, if you were wondering,” Roe said. “I’ve been monitoring them all night. A few of them are combing the island in a methodical way, but the bulk of them are stupid. They’re milling around and hoping they trip over someone to kill. We just need to steer clear of the smart ones.”

“How close are they?”

“Entirely too close. In another hour, they’ll be here, if they keep the same pace and pattern and aren’t distracted by killing someone else.”

It was terrible to hope for another’s death. But maybe she could hope they just chased someone else without catching them. . . .

A day in, and I’m already being stripped of my humanity. She shuddered, then closed her eyes tight. Shaking her head, she opened them and looked at Roe.

“Can you move?”

“Oh, sure. I was thinking a morning stroll might be nice.” Roe managed a wry smile. “You know, this hasn’t gone the way I pictured it. I thought . . . Guess I was naive.” She leaned her head back, looking up at the sky.

It wasn’t naive, though. Even as bad as the rumors about Akena were, there was nothing that could have prepared them for this. She couldn’t get the image of Kemra out of her head, or the glee in the face of the tree spirit as it stabbed her body with its thorns.

You weren’t naive. You were lied to.

Roe was still looking up, and Mayara followed her gaze. It was another dreaming sky, blue without even a wisp of cloud to mar the brilliance of its color. In the east, the morning sun tinted it with lemon yellow. The beauty warred with the horror of the last day.

Mayara wondered if Roe was thinking about her mother. Maybe she was regretting forcing Lord Maarte to acknowledge her power. Maybe she was just trying to see something that made her smile before descending into the madness of the island. Either way, it was time to go.

“We need to get by the shore. If I can find angel seaweed—”

“You need to get away from me,” Roe said, without looking at her. “I’m a liability. Stay with me, and you’re twice as likely to die.”

“Yeah, and if I leave you, you’re a hundred times more likely to die.” She’d already swum away from Roe once, leaving her in obvious danger, and she’d hated how that had made her feel. She wasn’t going to do it again.

Roe snorted, and then her snort turned into a cough. “Think highly of yourself, don’t you? Actually, that’s good. If you believe you can survive—” She coughed harder, the effort stealing the rest of her words.

Mayara didn’t like the sound of that cough. It sounded as if it were scraping her throat. She knew another kind of seaweed that would help with that. But again, that all depended on whether or not she’d be able to forage without being caught by a spirit. “Did your tutors in the Neran Stronghold teach you what to do with cuts like that? I’ve sliced myself plenty of times on dives. I can fix you.” Maybe. Hopefully.

“Well, I’m obviously not going to say no. Just let it be known that I was planning to be self-sacrificing and noble, and we’ll leave it at that.” Roe’s smile was closer to a grimace, but Mayara accepted it. She already felt better just being with Roe.

“Come on,” Mayara said. “Let’s get closer to the water.” Bracing herself, she let Roe lean on her to push herself up. “I’ll help you walk. You watch for spirits.”

“And what’s our plan if one comes?”

“No idea,” Mayara said. “Play dead?”

They hobbled together out of the rock formation. It was just barely morning, with the dawn light bathing everything in a cheerful glow, as if the island wasn’t a terrifying death trap. On a morning like this back home, Mayara would be leaping out of bed to race down to the docks to see the fishers off. Or she’d be preparing for a dive, plotting out the prettiest cliffs to leap off before she gathered the abalone below the waves. She liked mornings at home. A fresh day was full of possibility and adventure.

Here, she was less fond of morning.

It was going to be a lot easier for spirits to spot them.

“We need to find a cave,” Mayara said. “Judging from what I saw from the ship, there should be a lot of them.”

“Probably all occupied by spirits. My plan was to stay on the move. Don’t establish any patterns that the spirits can latch onto and use my power to distract them. In some of the books I’ve read—” She cut herself off. “Above.”

Mayara didn’t hesitate and didn’t look up—she simply reacted. Yanking Roe forward, she flattened them both against the trunk of a suka tree. Its thick leaves were a canopy above them, she hoped shielding them from view.

She felt a trio of spirits fly overhead: one was air, one was water, and one was ice.

She kept her thoughts as quiet as possible by thinking of an abalone shell. In her mind, she traced the swirls of color.

White . . .

Pink . . .

Green . . .

Purple . . .

It worked.